Existing comment:
"Virginia Sketchbook of Lewis Miller"
In the mid-19th century, prosperous cotton and sugar planters in the Deep South sought additional slave labor. In turn, Virginia planters, who were suffering an economic decline, sold almost 300,000 slaves to the Cotton Belt states between 1830 and 1860 to attain much needed capital. This internal slave trade from the Upper South to the Deep South caused painful disruptions and separations for slave families. |